1. Field of Invention
This invention generally relates to WLAN-based positioning systems and, more specifically, to methods of using user assigned access point locations to estimate a user's position.
2. Description of Related Art
Location-based services are an emerging area of mobile applications that leverages the ability of new devices to determine their current geographic position and report that to a user or to a service. Some examples of these services include local weather, traffic updates, driving directions, child trackers, buddy finders and urban concierge services. Some of these services allow their users to enter their geographic position, as described below.
Plazes.com is a geo-community website that allows users to “tag” locations and attach content, pictures and other media to that location. Users can also “check in” at a location and share that location with their friends. The user can “check in” using various different methods. The first method solicits the user's current address via a website. The system geocodes this address into a latitude and longitude and records the user as being “checked in” at that location.
The second method uses client-side software that attempts to auto-locate the user using a database of local network MAC addresses; each MAC address is associated with a latitude and longitude. Thus, the system uses the MAC address of the router to which the user is connected in order to determine the corresponding latitude and longitude. If the system doe not find the MAC address in the database, it prompts the user to enter a street address. The user-entered street address gets geocoded and the latitude and longitude submitted is associated with the MAC address and both are added to the database. If the system does recognize the MAC address of the router to which the user is connected, the system returns the stored latitude and longitude and automatically “checks in” the user at that location.
AOL.com uses a database of user-contributed information to help determine the position of a user using a location plug-in for the AOL Instant Messenger application. The system contains a database of network IP addresses and associated locations that have been contributed by users of the system. When a user requests his or her location, the system queries the database for any location entries corresponding to the user's network IP address and returns all of the results to the user with a “use count” next to each unique location entry. If multiple results are found, the system prompts the user to choose which address they would like to use as their location or allows the user to enter his or her own location information. If the network IP address is not found, the system prompts the user to enter his or her current location by entering a street address. This address gets geocoded and sent to the server along with the street address and network IP address to be stored in the database. Thus, other database entries are not overridden, rather, the existing remain and the new entries are added.
Meetro is a location-based instant messaging platform that includes client-side software that enables a user to find other nearby users. Because the system is proximity-based, the accuracy of the location estimation is low relative to other map-based applications. If the system is unable to auto-locate the user, the system allows the user to enter his or her current location as a street address.